Finding the Cure for Catholic Guilt While Naked Behind a KFC

The first night I drank alcohol ended with me naked in an alley behind KFC. I had never planned to ride the Hot Mess Express and get shit-faced drunk—I had never even intended to drink a sip of alcohol.

I grew up Catholic. Although my mother only attended church every few years and my Australian father identified as a Catholic-hating Protestant like his English ancestors, my parents sent me to Nativity Catholic School in Hollywood, Florida, to "learn morals." I remember few life lessons, but the screaming nuns were unforgettable.

Most of Florida's nuns had died—when South Beach calls, few Catholic girls want to forego rich men's dicks to marry Christ—but one sister remained, the notorious Sister Catherine. She dressed like an average old woman, wearing long jean skirts that you could buy at the Gap in 1997, and rocked a fashionable, short white lesbian haircut like Ellen Degeneres, but Sister Catherine was 100 percent a 1950s flashback. Her classroom's green carpets smelled like mildew, ancient National Geographics lined her shelves, and she loved to threaten us with corporal punishment.

In Spanish class, she hovered over me and the other first graders as we drew in coloring books. "Draw in the lines with crayons and outline the lines with markers!" she shrieked. "Draw in the lines with crayons and outline the lines with markers!" One day, I scribbled outside the lines. She put a ruler in my face: "Color in the lines!" she shouted. "God says obey your elders!"

Sister Catherine never hit us. (Nativity Catholic School had banned whippings, but allowed one kindergarten teacher to give students spankings on their birthdays for some reason.) But she scared us. Her screams, coupled with the priest's lectures about sin, created a guilt complex. Whenever I misbehaved, or broke one of God's rules or an adult's rule, my stomach filled with butterflies. I believed what I was told, because believing made the butterflies go away. I went to church, I read the bible every day, and answered the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" with, "I want to be Saint Mitchell."

At age ten, I left Catholic School. I continued attending church and believing what Sister Catherine and priests taught me till the eighth grade when I discovered the wonders of a boy shoving his cock down your throat, and cock penetrated my belief in God.

In high school, I broke all the Bible's rules, but I still experienced guilty butterflies in my belly. I was a cocksucker, but even cocksuckers follow some morals. And for me, morals rolled around in my mind all day long. I struggled to hook up with boys because I guilty for never actually dating a boy. (Gay teens rarely date; they just think with their dicks.)

I was a theatre kid, and every year we went to Tampa for a contest in a giant convention center. At the end of the competition, the adults hosted a giant dance, which was basically a homecoming for gay boys. For gay teens, it was our only annual chance to dry hump each other. My sophomore year, my friend Diag got blackout wasted at the dance and blew guys in the bathroom. He returned sweaty. "You gotta do it!" he said. I walked up to a boy in a suit and started humping him. He turned around and started making out with me, meaning I needed to take it to the next step, but butterflies filled my belly, and I froze. I couldn't even jerk him off on the dancefloor.

Under my morals, drinking under age was a big no-no. But my nerdy Irish twin, Charles, who is 18 months older than me, always encouraged me to drink. He was a late bloomer who only had a few nerdy friends in high school, but whenever he returned home from college, he threw wild parties with his "nerd herd" from high school.

The parties always got out of control even by South Florida standards. At one party, for instance, a chemistry major dressed as a dominatrix cop threw a Grey Goose bottle from one room into another and then ran out the door, jumped the fence, and ran to the beach a few miles away. A topless girl chased after her, but she ran in the wrong direction. The nude girl ended up in the middle of a busy intersection, with an 18-wheeler heading towards her. The trucker honked his horn, pulled the breaks, and turned on his high beams. Only then did she realize her tits were out in the middle of one of South Florida's busiest streets. She now attends one of the best medical schools in America.

Charles regularly threw ragers in my mother's spare house behind her puppy store in a bad neighborhood. She had bought the house for our oldest brother, but he moved to Jacksonville with his high school sweetheart. In his absence, my mother filled the house with items she hoarded: Christmas lights, leather couches, piles of storage boxes—the list goes on. My brother considered the house, as we called it, the best place to party because if any drunk kid broke something, my mother would never know. At the time, Hollywood, Florida, had a rape problem that my friends were convinced were being done by one "Hollywood Rapist."

At the start of summer 2007, Charles threw a 1990s fetish party. For the first time, I agreed to "stop by" with my friends Brittany and Jaq. Walking into the house, I saw my childhood belongings: Power Rangers toys and a coffee table I used to build a train around. Everyone was older than me except my friend Alex and a theatre kid who had brought his boyfriend. The rooms reeked of mud and vodka. Charles's friend, Carlos, had concocted a weird mix drink called "The Carlos," which, based on the purple vomit everywhere a few parties later, was a mix of expired grape juice and vodka. Somewhere along the way, I took a shot from Peter.

"My mind's telling me no!" I sang. "But my body, my body is telling me yaaaaaaas."

The next thing I knew, I was stumbling around the living room. R Kelly's "Bump N' Grind" came on. I bolted onto the table and stripped down to my underwear.

"My mind's telling me no!" I sang. "But my body, my body is telling me yaaaaaaas."

My friend Alex sat on a chair laughing at me. From across the room, I saw the theatre boy's boyfriend standing against the dining room wall, eyeing my boxers. I jumped off the table and walked up to him, wasted.

"You're looking at me," I said.

I grabbed his hand and brought it to my crotch. He pulled out my erection and started jerking me off in front of everyone. His boyfriend walked into the room, and he pulled his hand back and walked out of the dining room and into the kitchen.

A few hours later, I sat on the kitchen floor with a bottle of vodka in my hand. The boy walked in. I jumped up and stumbled towards him.

"You need my number," I slurred. "You need a blowjob."

He smiled. He handed me his phone. I entered my number in his phone, gave him his cell back, and then he walked away.

An hour later, either he or I texted and said we should hook up now. He texted me telling me to meet him in his car in the alley behind my mother's pet store and the adjacent KFC. Like a pirate on a ship, I shook back and forth as I struggled to walk from my house to the alley in my underwear. When I reached his car, I knocked my fist on the window.

He pulled down the window and whispered, "Shhh. Get in the back."

I opened the car door and climbed from the back seat into the passenger seat. I slipped off my boxers. We kissed. I banged my head on his lap. He laughed. I started unbuckling his pants, but got nowhere. He pushed my head to the side. He undid his buttons and slid out his dick. I started deep throating him. My head hit his wheel. He grabbed my head and pushed me harder. I forget what happened next, until we were done, jizz was running down my chest, and he was staring at me laughing.

"You got something dark on your neck," he said.

I wiped my neck. "It's just chocolate."

I opened the car door and rolled out. I stood up and walked back to my house, keeping my hand on the fence and then the house's wall to stand up. When I walked into the house, I found the party had ended. My brother and five or so of his friends lay on the tile floor, getting ready to sleep.

"Where have you been?" my friend Alex shouted. "I thought you were being murdered by the Hollywood rapist!"

"No," I said, wiping what I thought was chocolate off my neck." "I was eating chocolate."

The room burst into laughter. "Chocolate?" Alex asked. "Those are hickies, and you're covered in come!"

The next morning, I woke up on the floor of the house. I blew that guy's boyfriend! I thought. Butterflies filled my stomach. That's so fucked up! Then I stood up, and the ground moved. I was still drunk. As I stumbled across the room, the liquor in my belly shook the butterflies out. I had found a cure for Catholic guilt.